St. Landry democrat., 1887-09-17
EATING AND DINING.
The Now Almost Universal Expression OF
Hospitality.
FANNIE NJ. HOW ELL.

! 1t is doubtful if there ever has been a
| time in this or any other country when
cutting seemed to be, as it is to-day, the
universal expression of hospitality.
Feasts of bygone days are historical
! facts, but as such are chiefly remarkable
for their objectionable extravaganza or
disgusting display of gluttony, as dis
| tinguished from the reasonable satisfac-
tons of refined appetite. The modern
| dinner is quite another affair, however,
and though it may not reach the mark OF
Arabian hospitality, which carries a
pledge of friendship and protection with
the smallest piece of bread eaten with
stranger as an expression of goodwill
and cordiality it is worth having.
| No less a gastronome than admired,
honored Thackeray says: Boys 60 to
balls: men 90 to dinners" and declares
that in his opinion the good sense, man
Illness, friendliness and morality of Eng
stitution, dinner"
To the hostess grand dinner IS
grand occasion and, like matrimony, mot
W bc ilHHtlN VI iIIthtiCIitIs tHtSiti
into" popular novelist says it should
be arranged on the principles of an aris
tocracy-persons composing it must be
polite to each other, although they may
| be rude to everybody else
A hundred, a thousand chapters might
be written on the one topic of eating, for
the subject grows by what It's fed upon
and apparently is boundless; but when
cook books have been exhausted and
fashion for the time being has provided
for the disposition of the company, who
has said all there is to say of the true es
sentials of a dinner party Doctor John
son, with his tea-bibbling and his theory
that no man is ever improved by a good
dinner, but that, having eaten it, is sim
ply blind to his own defects, takes the
standpoint of animality-the most fatal
of principles as applied to fine dining or
even reasonable devouring. To simply
understand the scope of dining in true
symposium style, all must agree that
though eating is animal, education and
refinement lift the process to the plane
of art and poetry, and that the practice
of dining in the company of the best
people contributes to every grace of So
cial education.
Dinner is ready; the guests are assem-
bled. Do they discuss the viands, the
linen, silver, glass, and china? There is
scarcely an alluson to either. No one
seems to drift into that region of the
commonplace where Sir Richard Steele
says d man is merely a reverend vege-
table. But what a play of wit flashes
up and down the line! What toning-
up there is of the story-teller's rare ia
cility! What uprisings of all intellectual
and responsive qualities! What delight
full coming -together of old friends
What mental stimulation over the intro
duction of new and kindred minds
1t is at the dinner-tabe that the man of
monosyllables happens upon surprising
vocabulary, the shy man forgets his over
constituencies, and every one with grain
of social substance in him admits that
the best pleasures in life are the appar-
emily unimportant things within reach
of all.
To the intellectual diner-out yiands
are but agents; the real quality of the
occasion is its comradery and its CONVEX
sation. We have no Holland houses in
this country, and our Sydney Smiths and
Charles Lambs are not yet set down in
history; nevertheless, many dinner of
the present day is as rare feast in re-
gard both to guest and menu as the en-
tertainments of Lord and Lady Holland
ever were. They may lack the peculiar
spirit of the Holland House dinner party,
for no American hostess, although as
wasteful in herself, perhaps, as Lady
Holland, would be likely as a joke, to
inveigle a discordant and quarrelsome
person into joining her guests at the
last moment that she might enjoy the
"fun? Apart from this strange
freak which on one time pitted
Theirs and Lord Palmerston against
each other, and made it necessary for the
hostess to send them home, Lady Hol-
lands consummate tact may well be
copied in arranging dinner-party.
Each guest will then be chosen in refer
ence to other guests, for though people
may agree in conventions, exchanges and
even in editorial offices, they cannot
always eat from the same plate without
growing; so that selecting guests is
really of greater Importance than select
inc meats. Indeed it is significant of
the famous Holland House dinners, that
they were entirely without ceremony,
and no one nowadays knows what
yiands were placed before the guests.
The developing and improbable int1u-
ences of dining in congenial society
often strike one accidentally, SO to
speak. To hear group of men, whose
lives are given entirely to trade and
labor, talk across satisfactory dinner
is to receive fresh impressions, and
surprise that may be compared to wash
ing Johnny's face and getting at his
pretty curves and dimples. 1t makes
one think better of men, taking them
"by and large" as the sailors say, better
of business with all its strange associa-
lions, and draws favorable attention to
The difference between the animal in
man and the animal irrespective of him.
And the more one thinks about it the
more clearly it is to be seen that in
bringing her children to the level of the
lower orders of creation, simply that
life may be sustained, Nature has fully
compensated by making the analogy SO
trifing, and the distinction so vast and
so progressive.